Tag: History

Vintage Dancing Girls: Couples

Post author By basilisksam
Post date October 14, 2024
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Vintage dancing girls come in many different configurations from solo dancers (some just posing), troupes professional and amateur, old, young and sometimes not even girls as you will see below. That diversity is what struck me about this genre of RPPCs and photographs when I began this collection. I’ll be posting some examples of the different types of dancing girls in the future but I’m starting with a few of the couples from the first 100 items in my flickr album.

So clearly this dancing girl on the left is a man. One of the intriguing things about collecting old photographs and postcards – irrespective of the gender of the participants, you have to ask “What on earth were they thinking of when they did this?”

I think it’s safe to say this is two women. The studio is Stahl Studio, 1221 N. 2nd St., Philadelphia, PA.
I’m guessing 1920s from the looks and clothing.

Colourised postcards were very popular. Curiously only the dancer to the right has her dress colourised though it’s possible the other dress was too but the colour has faded.

Ideal Studios. Written on back “Myrtle The Witch Marjorie Fairy Bluebell School Play London St Martins School 1921.” It’s always a bonus to have details such as date, names, studios, locations.

The second photo is also by Ideal Studios Oxford St. Written on back ” Myrtle and Marjorie Dancing Display.”

Musical theatre type outfits are popular though Jazz hands not so much.

A more candid photograph in contrast to the more usual and obviously posed ones. There’s nothing to identify the dancers but from their clothes I’d guess late 1950s or early 1960s.

Again nothing to identify these two. This was image 100 in the collection in 2016. The album was started in 2012 and is, of course, still ongoing.

Tags dancing, fashion, History, photography, vintage dancing girls

Social history

Some Music Hall Curiosities

Post author By basilisksam
Post date August 5, 2024
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Sometimes it’s hard to understand music hall performers. I’ve seen at least two other postcards of The Yorkshire Rustics yet what was their act really like? From this image they look more frightening than entertaining. Certainly depictions of simpletons and lunatics would be offensive to the modern eye.

There’s a good discussion between Alexi Sayle and Stewart Lee about music hall acts in Alexi Sayle’s podcast (episode 7) about “working class surrealism.” They’re both music hall fans and the more I think about it the more I can see music hall influences on variety acts of the late twentieth century and, of course, Sayle and Lee and other performers like Frank Skinner, himself a George Formby fan.

Speaking of surreal, how about this skating girl and skating bear? That must have been a sight to see.

And here’s a girl talking to her teddy bear.

Groups of “juveniles” were very popular in the halls and some performers continued to perform as juveniles long after they could sensibly claim to be so young. In terms of collecting I can’t successfully repair the damage to this card digitally, though it’s still of interest.

There’s a fine line between music hall performers and those who would once have been exhibited in “freak shows.” According to sideshowworld.com “Lady Little travelled all over the world. In 1913 she was 23 inches tall and weighed 12.75 lbs.” Contrast the indignities suffered by the Elephant Man and the popularity with royalty of “General” Tom Thumb.

Contortionists were another staple of the music hall and variety.

And of course there were the ever popular exotic acts.

The TV programme “The Good Old Days” did a good job of reproducing some famous acts but it was clearly a highly sanitised version of what a real music hall bill was like.

Tags History, music hall, postcards, social history

occult photography spooky

Scary Dolls, Haunted Dolls

Post author By basilisksam
Post date July 11, 2024
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So I was listening to an episode of the loopholes podcast when they began discussing haunted dolls. Though I often find old photos of dolls creepy I never realised there was a whole sub-culture invested in haunted dolls. Indeed I was astonished to find a search for “haunted dolls” on Ebay came up with 1600 such dolls for sale. These dolls came with detailed histories of when and where they came from, what their powers were and so on. Cue a discussion with my wife about buying old dolls at car boot sales and making up stories for them before selling them on ebay.

This angry child from my cabinet card collection would be a good basis for a story. Now where can I find a doll that looks like hers?

This girl and her doll look particularly spooky don’t you think?

This doll has such powers it needs six girls to restrain it.

Now this photograph, and it is a photograph not a postcard, has real potential. The Ebay seller I bought this from suggested it could be a post mortem photograph, a “popular” thing to take in Victorian times and commanding high prices for good examples from collectors today.

Ultimately I don’t think this a PM photo even though the Girl’s eyes seem to have been painted on. The doll though – now that’s a different matter.

I don’t really believe in haunted dolls though, after watching a Youtube video of twenty haunted dolls, I noticed the comments were mostly people apologising to the dolls for looking at them without permission. I didn’t apologise so if you don’t hear from me again you’ll know why.

Tags hauntings, History, photography, spooky, supernatural, Victorian

Dance Social history

Vintage Dancing Girls

[This article was first published in The Call Boy,Summer 2024]

I collect old photographs and real photographic post cards. Most people following this hobby will at some point decide to specialise in a specific subject. In my case I began to notice how often photographs of girls in dance costumes began to crop up. It didn’t seem to matter what age they were or, in a few cases, what sex they were. There are many different categories of dancing girls to be seen from girls’ dance groups in school to exotic dancers to be seen in nightclubs and on the stage; from amateur solo dancers to large troupes of professionals. From the point of view of the Call Boy the photos of most interest are of the professional and semi-professional dancers that appeared in music hall, theatre and variety shows and it is these that I concentrate on here.

The most obvious place to start is with the Tiller Girls. I used to think that the Tiller Girls were just those dancers who appeared on Sunday Night at the London Palladium but was surprised to learn that the first Tiller Girls were trained by John Tiller in 1889 and that there have many different troupes trained using his methods ever since, some bearing the name Tiller Girls or Tiller Troupe but many going under different names. There is an excellent book tracing the history of the Tillers – Tiller’s Girls by Doremy Vernon which, though out of print, can easily be obtained on one the web auction sites.

Another famous group of dancing girls were to be found at the Windmill Theatre. Although they might be better known for their naked tableaux, the Windmill Girls performed dance routines in shows and they were in constant rehearsal for the new shows which changed regularly. You can find some fragments of routines by the Windmill Girls on YouTube, as you can for the Tiller Girls. There’s even a 1949 film shot in the Windmill Theatre called “Murder at the Windmill” which has recently been broadcast by Talking Pictures TV. There is also the Judi Dench/Bob Hoskins film “Mrs Henderson Presents” though I understand some liberties were taken with the storyline. The Windmill also published annual editions of a magazine, Revudeville, where you can find photographs of the dancers and their individual names. After publishing one photo of Windmill Dancers I was contacted by the son of one of the dancers!

Nearly every Music Hall and Variety bill had its share of female dancers, many if not most unnamed as they appeared in chorus lines. There were many variations on the type of dancers and, of course, they often presented skits and other entertainments as well as dancing. Juveniles seem to have been very popular and were often presented as if they were all members of the same family though this was not always true. “Model Maids” and “Dairymaids” were other popular ways to package dancers. My own collection of photographs and postcards suggest that troupes of dancing girls must have run into the thousands. Some, like the various Tiller troupes, lasted for many years whilst others probably had much shorter shelf lives. What happened to all the “juveniles” for instance? Herein lies the problem of collecting these materials in that it’s difficult or impossible to find reliable details and dates for when these troupes were active. Sometimes there’s a date on the reverse of a postcard and often there’s the name of the studio where a photograph was taken but handwritten dates are unreliable and most of the studios have long since disappeared. Even if a troupe was photographed at a named studio there’s no guarantee that the town where the studio was situated was the home town of the dancers. Trying to trace information about these dancers online is usually fruitless and shows up the inadequacies of the internet for any serious research into the history of these entertainers. Books such as “Grace, Beauty and Banjos” by Michael Kilgariff and “Roy Hudd’s Cavalcade of Variety Acts” contain lists of performers but seldom have any information on any but the most famous dance troupes

My own favourite “dancing girl” is Jessie Matthews, often known as the “dancing divinity.” At least in her case there is a plethora of information to be had on line and in print but best of all we still have her wonderful films from the 1930s. It’s tragic that she never got to work with Fred Astaire as apparently other work commitments prevented a planned project together.

The entire collection of my vintage dancing girls photographs and post cards can be found at https://flickr.com/photos/basilisksam/albums/ I am still collecting and still researching and would be interested to hear from anyone who can add to my knowledge of vintage dancing girls.

Tags History, photography, postcards

photography Social history Victorian

Maids: real and theatrical

Post author By basilisksam
Post date June 14, 2024
No Comments on Maids: real and theatrical

This is probably what most people think of when imagining Victorian maidservants.

“Parlour maids” is written in pencil on the back of this cabinet card but that was probably added recently. I suspect they were a mixture of different types of maid from a household as servants each had different functions – scullery maid, chamber maid etc. The two girls seated at the front look rather young but girls started in service as young as eight.

This is rather more Downton Abbey (not that I’ve ever watched it) and again what you’d expect. Note there’s a dog amongst the maids too.

Being a maid was not a glamorous job. The hours were long, the jobs dirty and demanding and women in service would be miles away from their families and rarely given time off to visit them. Nevertheless some families thought well enough of their maids to have them photographed.

Troupes of “maids” were a popular entertainment in the music halls though they bore little resemblance to real maids.

For some reason there was a mania for dressing as dairymaids.

Maids on stage are popular to this day. Hard to date this one but probably the 1930s or 40s.

And here’s Gladys Cooper attended by her maid in the play Excelsior from 1928. I’ll write about Gladys in a later blog. She was arguably the first woman to exploit her image on postcards and sold hundreds of thousands of them. It was said that nearly every soldier in the first world war trenches had a postcard of her in his tobacco tin.

[There’s a whole subculture of Victorian working women such as pit brow women. There’s also a fascinating book on Victorian Working Women by Michel Hiley which covers pit brow women, women miners, fishergirls, milkwomen, gymnasts etc]

Tags black and white, History, maids, photography, Victorian, working women

photography Social history spooky Victorian

The Book of the Dead

If something was called The Book of the Dead I’d expect to see something scary like this ventriloquist and his dummy. (If you’ve ever seen the film Dead of Night you’ll know why this scares me!)

What I wouldn’t expect is to see a Victorian photo album like this:

Photo albums, with or without themes, were very popular in Victorian time. This Tennyson themed album has lots of cut outs to contain CDVs and cabinet cards. This one’s rather charming I’d say.

I mention this because some time ago I attended a commercially organised “ghost hunt” which took place overnight. It was at the school I’d attended as a teenager so I was already familiar with the place and had not been aware of anything particularly spooky associated with it. As it turned out the whole event was rather silly with the facilitators trying hard to conjure up supernatural events, cold spots and the like. To put it kindly it was utter nonsense.

At one point in the night I found myself in a small room with several other participants trying to make contact with “spirits”. The organiser of this session gave out roles to each of us. She asked for a volunteer to sit with the “book of the dead.” As everyone else was wary I volunteered only to find that the book was actually a Victorian album full of cabinet cards and CDVs. I was delighted of course and could see nothing negative about sitting with this album. My frustration was that because we were operating in very dim lighting I couldn’t see the contents properly. No spirits were contacted or harmed during the seance.

For the most part I find nothing creepy about my interest in old photographs. I see the process of collecting and preserving these photos as a valuable and worthwhile activity, hopefully ensuring that other people can see and appreciate these wonderful social documents. I am perplexed when my partner or other people think there is something creepy about my hobby and refer to it as collecting photographs of dead people. I think those people should be remembered and celebrated not discarded and forgotten.

On the other hand there are some creepy items in my collection though I suspect what I find creepy is not what everyone finds creepy. The photo at the head of this blog for instance is creepy to me as are all films and photos of ventriloquists and their dummies.

Dolls are another thing that can be disturbing. I know I share this with many other people from the feedback I get but sometimes I see a photo featuring a girl and a doll and think it’s creepy whereas others find it delightful. The massed dolls with at girl at the centre is a good example. Creepy or endearing? Only you can decide.

This on the other hand is definitely creepy.

Sometimes the subjects of photographs have a rather haunted look about them. This could be caused by the fact that early photographic techniques required the subjects to be still whilst the exposure was taken but sometimes the subjects look haunted anyway. Taken in Malta this military man and his daughter have a decidedly haunted look.

And sometimes there’s just something wrong or odd about a photograph that makes you wonder what was really going on.

Does the man behind the children look menacing to you?Haunted or cute?

Considering most of these photographs come from the early nineteenth century it is almost certain that the subjects are all now dead but I prefer to think of these old photographs not as items in “The Book of the Dead” but as a celebration of people’s lives.

Tags black and white, History, photography, spooky, Victorian